Responding to God's Check List part 1

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I was reading through my Twitter stream and I came across a link to a video someone made in attempt to dismiss the Bible's teaching on the character and nature of God by attempting to show logical inconsistencies. The author uses the idea of a checklist which God uses to delineate His purposes and goals. The author and I agree on what Christians believe about God. He does indeed have purposes and goals and He does interact with humanity throughout history. As unbeliever the author has the audacity to think he knows what the plan of God is and what God's purposes are. I think it's worth looking at his checklist and see if it is the same checklist we see in the Bible. This will be in 2 parts. The first part will cover the video up to 5 minutes and 6 seconds. I found a transcript of the video on the Internet

Christians, you believe that your god has orchestrated a divine plan for his creation, and that all events which either have taken place or will take place were foreseen by this god with infallible certainty, and taken into consideration for this plan. You believe that this plan is motivated heavily by God’s unwavering love for his creation, and his desire for us to lead healthy, ethical lives followed by an eternity of happiness alongside him in Heaven. You also believe that your god is perfect and sovereign, and as such you believe that as mere human beings we have no grounds to critique or question this plan, that any flaw or inadequacy we may find in the plan is attributable to our imperfections as sinful, arrogant, rebellious, finite beings. So, that in mind I want to take a moment to remind you of what this plan essentially is, because I think that you rarely afford yourself the opportunity to step back and appreciate it as a whole. So without further ado here it is; God’s perfect plan for his creation, the big checklist in the sky:

1. Decide to arrange for something other than yourself to exist. Check!

The Bible clearly agrees that nothing exists outside of the actions of God. Check!

2. Create a being by the name of Lucifer with full knowledge that this being will betray you, and ultimately cause an infinite amount of suffering unnecessarily. Check!

Um...Hold up! Yes, God had full knowledge of what Lucifer would do.

14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.

15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.

16 Through your widespread trade
you were filled with violence,
and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, O guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.

Ezekiel 28:14-16

How do we know whether the suffering causing evil is unnecessary? How do we know that God does not fulfill His goals despite what evil occurs. God uses everything and in control of everything.

15 When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?" 16 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, "Your father left these instructions before he died: 17 'This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.' Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father." When their message came to him, Joseph wept.

18 His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. "We are your slaves," they said.

19 But Joseph said to them, "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 21 So then, don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your children." And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.

Genesis 50:15-19

I'd reword it now: Create a being by the name of Lucifer with full knowledge that this being will betray you, and ultimately cause an infinite amount of suffering unnecessarily, but I will set him up for failure before he is even created. Check!


3. Allow an unfathomably horrific dimension of existence known as Hell to emerge, created by yourself or perhaps Lucifer, and allow that to continue existing. Do not override or prevent such a thing; it will come into play later. Check!

Um, How can you say when Hell was created? Something to be considered is what hell is for.

4. Create objective, unchanging moral prescriptions and base them upon whatever your nature happens to be, and then label any action or thought contrary to these standards as sin. Check!

God's objective moral prescriptions are as eternal as God Himself is. Therefore it would not be on the checklist. And By definition "sin" is opposite and contrary to God.


5. Be sure to include in these moral prescriptions edicts for social and psychological health, such as encouragement to beat ones children with a rod (Proverbs 23:13-14), permission to buy and sell slaves and will them as property to one’s children for life (Leviticus 25:44-46), requirement that women not be allowed to teach or have authority over men (Timothy 2:9-14), and of course the instruction to kill anyone who expresses interest in worshiping other gods (Deuteronomy 13:6-10). Check!

Proverbs 23:13-14 says:

13 Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you punish him with the rod, he will not die.

14 Punish him with the rod
and save his soul from death.

We are now living the consequences of not doing this: a youth culture built on disrespecting authority. Parents and teachers afraid of their children.

Leviticus 25:44-46 says:

44 " 'Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

Slavery in ancient Israel is not the same as what we th8ink of when we discuss Slavery. It wasn't racial but economic and no where in the Bible is slavery condoned or talked about a good idea, just laws limiting what you can and cannot do. Recall that back then you could not declare bankruptcy or go on unemployment or get welfare. For some people the best you could do is to sell yourself into slavery.

I've responded to the women preaching here.

So you can't check that thought...not on the checklist.

6. Design a physical universe with planets, animals, and vegetation all with the appearance of age. Be sure to include in your creation biological flaws, redundancies, and over complications that appear as if they were the product of blind accumulative processes; perhaps a urinary tract that runs straight through the prostate gland, or an unnecessary appendix prone to inflation and rupturing, or maybe a respiratory and digestive system forced to share the same pluming. Check!

I realize that this is a swipe against Intelligent Design and Creationism. This point shows a complete lack of thought and in arrogance asserts that we can come up with a better design than God's. We do not know for sure if all those "problems" being raised are really bad and we don't know if a lot of those "unnecessary" organs are truly not needed! We are still trying to figure out how our bodies truly works.

20But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' " 21Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? - Romans 9:20-21

Not even close to being on the list!

7. Create a garden with a tree in it bearing fruit that when eaten provides knowledge of your objective moral standards. Then create two sentient, cognitive beings without knowledge or awareness of these standards and instruct them not to eat from the tree which would enlighten them. In other words arrange it so that only after they eat from the tree are they capable of understanding that doing so was a violation of objective moral standards. Check!

Adam and Eve did know and was aware of God's standard. Violating the objective morals of God boils down to one thing - Disobeying God. They knew better and they chose to outright disobeyed..damning themselves....and us. Not of God's checklist either.

8. Warn these cognitive beings that they will undoubtedly die if they eat from this tree, but don’t follow through if they do. Endow a reptile with vocal cords, lips, or some other means of speaking audibly to your cognitive beings, enabling it to make a convincing case to one of them for eating from the tree; do not prevent this or intervene. Check!

God told Adam that if ate of that tree he would surely die. Humanity was created in the image of God so that He was not designed to die. Had Adman never sinned, then neither would he had ever died. Death is the conclusion of sin - the inevitability of being a sinner. As for the talking serpent, how do you know it didn't happen? You believe in dinosaurs but never seen one alive either. God did not intervened - that's true. My question is that if God had not allowed it would you or I be here having this discussion? No way. God does have a plan and purposes for which we are discovering daily.

9. Now by this point make sure that your cognitive beings have been equipped for reproducing themselves and multiplying, and because one of them has sinned, arrange that every single one of their descendants until the end of time will be born with an inherent sinful nature, defaulting in a future of everlasting torment. Do not by any means allow each of them to be born with a clean slate and the capacity for living a sin free life if they desire, as you did with your first two prototypes. Check!

We are shaped in iniquity and full of sin. Could I personally exist without war, adultery, fornication, stealing, or even chattel slavery? I'm an African-American born in the United States so unless everything had not happened exactly the way it has not one of us would be here. None of us have a clean slate we sin because we want to sin. I agree that none of us can be sin-free because we are enslaved to sin and unable to free ourselves.

10. Endow these cognitive beings with a soul, which keeps their thoughts and feelings and other cognitive faculties in existence forever one way or another, and then allow the sinfulness of these beings to be incompatible with your presence and let Hell be the only other place they can go once they exit the physical world. Do not make any attempt to spare these souls the eternal torment of Hell, such as allowing souls to stop existing all together, or creating an additional realm for them to reside besides with you or in Hell. Check!

The author seems to not like hell. The thing thing is God has given us a way out. You don't have to go to hell if you don't want to. all we have to do is go to God on His terms not our own. Jesus is more than just an attempt to spare us hell, because it is through Him we get to be with God.

11. Over time allow these beings to populate the Earth you have created, knowing with infallible certainty of course that after so many generations they will disappoint you enough that you find it necessary to kill all of them in a global flood, and start all over from scratch. Check!

Again God had a purpose. Generations of people lived and generations of people died. And God had a purpose for their existence. The flood is included in that!

12. Now, when this happens (Again, right on schedule), make an exception for one small family of cognitive beings whom you deem righteous. Of course it goes without saying that your powers of omniscience allow to know, again, with infallible certainty that this family too will ultimately disappoint you in the same way as those you drowned, rendering the entire endeavor futile, but for now it’s best that you pretend not to know that. Check!

Yes, God knew that Noah's descendants would be just evil as the the people who died in the flood. The difference is that God has chosen to give us mercy. And it is His right to do whatever He wants to do.


13. Instruct this small disappointment of a family to populate the entire world all over again by way of incest. Check!

I'm sure the author would agree the theory of evolution and thereby would have to agree that close relatives would have procreate to pass on advantageous mutagenetic traits to the next generation. Therefore...check!

Stay tuned for my part 2 response! And here is the video in its entirety!